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Reconstructing relative genome size of vascular plants through geological time
Author(s) -
Lomax Barry H.,
Hilton Jason,
Bateman Richard M.,
Upchurch Garland R.,
Lake Janice A.,
Leitch Ilia J.,
Cromwell Avery,
Knight Charles A.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
new phytologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.742
H-Index - 244
eISSN - 1469-8137
pISSN - 0028-646X
DOI - 10.1111/nph.12523
Subject(s) - genome size , guard cell , genome , biology , cell size , evolutionary biology , leaf size , extant taxon , vascular plant , ecology , botany , gene , genetics , species richness , microbiology and biotechnology
Summary The strong positive relationship evident between cell and genome size in both animals and plants forms the basis of using the size of stomatal guard cells as a proxy to track changes in plant genome size through geological time. We report for the first time a taxonomic fine‐scale investigation into changes in stomatal guard‐cell length and use these data to infer changes in genome size through the evolutionary history of land plants. Our data suggest that many of the earliest land plants had exceptionally large genome sizes and that a predicted overall trend of increasing genome size within individual lineages through geological time is not supported. However, maximum genome size steadily increases from the M ississippian ( c . 360 million yr ago (Ma)) to the present. We hypothesise that the functional relationship between stomatal size, genome size and atmospheric CO 2 may contribute to the dichotomy reported between preferential extinction of neopolyploids and the prevalence of palaeopolyploidy observed in DNA sequence data of extant vascular plants.